


#20: The Best Way to Show Thanks Is to Wear It. Even if It's Only Once.

by Knitwritezombie (Missa_G)



Series: 100 Rules for Adults (That Clint Barton Never Learned) [20]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clint's good with his hands, Crochet, Gen, Gifts, Hobbies, Knitting, Natasha knits, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-18
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-21 14:39:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2471879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missa_G/pseuds/Knitwritezombie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha picks up a hobby. Clint picks one up right beside her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	#20: The Best Way to Show Thanks Is to Wear It. Even if It's Only Once.

It had been Clint’s suggestion that Natasha find a hobby – something to occupy her hands on their downtime that wasn’t beating the crap out of Clint in gym. 

So, she’d taken up knitting. Clint approved. It was a useful skill, and provided another easily accessible weapon (two, if you counted the super sharp scissors). Clint himself was a fair hand with a needle; Having grown up poor and in the circus, he’d had to maintain his own costume and other clothes. He could darn a sock and patch a tear and even hem a second-hand pair of pants. 

So, as Natasha taught herself from online videos and tutorials, Clint would listen with half an ear while he read in the safe house. When she’d drag him along to yarn shops she found online for their time between the end of a mission and extraction, he would find himself browsing through the shops, fingering lengths of yarn, or flipping through pattern books. Eventually, Clint started to pick up bits and pieces from the people at the yarn shops or from Nat, and he caved and taught himself to crochet right alongside her (he liked making granny squares; he could work on them as time allowed without having to remember where he left off in a pattern). 

Clint found the repetitive movement of working the squares soothing, which wasn’t surprising, given how much comfort he found in the rhythm of shooting a bow. He took to keeping bits of yarn and a hook in his go-bag, just like Natasha kept a ball of yarn and her knitting needles in hers. Coulson flashed them amused looks while he worked on mission reports, the two of them sat together on the second bed in a hotel room, working on their projects in silence.

One of Natasha’s first projects was a lumpy hat and scarf combo in dark grey wool, for Coulson. They had taken her months to make, and Coulson wore them happily on his treks to and from work. Clint got a long (like ten foot long) purple scarf that he wore wound about himself in his apartment when the heating didn’t work (it was really too long to wear outside). As her skills improved, she started working on more complex projects, including a gorgeous dark grey cashmere sweater that Clint received for Christmas.

Meanwhile, Clint just amassed a huge pile of multi-colored squares, working his way through a skein of yarn at a time, whatever color appealed to him at the time.

“What are you going to do with those,” Natasha said one afternoon while Clint quickly repacked his go-bag with clean underwear, socks, and checked his toiletries. 

He shrugged. “I dunno. Hadn’t really thought that far ahead. I just like making ‘em.”

“You should put them together in a blanket. For Coulson.”

He looked at her over his shoulder. “Coulson?”

“Why not?” Her face was expressionless, but he caught a glint of something in her eye. 

“Hm.” He was going to have to do something with them soon; the squares were starting to take over a big corner of his living room. “I’ll think about it,” he said as he zipped his bag closed.

Clint spent the next few weeks after the mission on medical leave for a gun shot wound to the thigh. He took Natasha’s advice, did some research on the best way to assemble his squares, and set to work. It took the better part of a week to sort the squares, organize them into a pattern and stitch them together. It was a time intensive process, but for the first time since he could remember, he wasn’t going absolutely stir crazy. When he was finished piecing it all together, he worked a border around the whole thing. After a bit more research, he washed it a couple of times until the yarn softened up and it was fuzzy rather than scratchy.

When Clint returned to duty, he toted the completed afghan with him in a large bag. He presented it unceremoniously to Coulson by thumping it down in the middle of his desk before Clint sat in one of the visitor chairs. 

“What’s this?” Coulson said, eyeing it suspiciously.

“Open it,” Clint said casually, though he was a little nervous.

Coulson stared at him for a moment, then reached for the bag. His eyes widened a bit as he pulled the blanket from the bag and unfolded it. “This…Clint, are these the squares you’ve been making?”

“Yup,” Clint said, grinning through his internal panic as Coulson – Phil, ran his fingers over some of the stitching. 

“This is really nicely done, Clint. Thank you.” Phil’s eyes were soft and pleased, the smile lines showing at the corners. 

“You’re welcome,” Clint said. 

Two weeks later, when Clint slipped into Coulson’s dark office, he found the man curled up on the sofa, fast asleep, the blanket Clint had made wrapped around him.

**Author's Note:**

> So I hadn't meant to give Clint one of my hobbies, but it just seemed to fit.


End file.
